The results of the census are classified into 7 themes:

• Evolution and structure of the population

• Couples - Families - Households

• Housing

• Diplomas - Education

• Labour force - Employment - Unemployment

• Employment characteristics

• Foreigners - Immigrants

The data disseminated uses:

• The French nomenclature of activities: NAF revision 2 adopted in 2008;

• The nomenclature of professions and socio-professional categories (PCS) adopted in 2003;

• The official geographical code (COG).

Jobs are mainly disseminated according to:

• The sector of activity of the NAF, revision 2: in 5, 17 or 38 items;

• The socio-professional category of the PCS 2003 in 6 or 29 items;

• Working hours, status (salaried or not), employment conditions (trainee, fixed-term contract, permanent contract, etc.).

The municipal population comprises people having their usual residence on the territory of the municipality. It includes homeless people or people usually residing in mobile homes registered in the territory of the municipality as well as inmates in the municipal penitentiary institutions. It is the statistical population comparable to the unduplicated population of previous general censuses.

The population counted separately includes some people whose usual residence is in another municipality but who maintain a residential link with the municipality. It includes, for example, pupils or students of full age who live for their studies in another municipality but whose family residence is located on the territory of the municipality or people residing in a retirement home located in another municipality but who have retained a family residence on the territory of the municipality. It is important to count such situations separately, firstly to clarify which commune is really the commune of residence but also to avoid double counting between two communes when their populations are added together.

Decree no. 2019-1302 of 5 December 2019 amending decree no. 485-2003 of 5 June 2003 on the population census removes from the scope of the population counted separately the homeless people attached, according to the law of 3 January 1969, to the commune. The legal populations from 1 January 2017 onwards take account of this change.

The total population is the sum of the municipal population and the population counted separately.

Employment : In the census, working people can be counted at their place of residence or at their place of work. At the place of residence, we speak of the active population with a job. At the place of work, we speak of employment at the place of work or, more briefly, employment.

Since 2004, the census has made it possible to take better account than before of working people who have a job, even if it is occasional or of short duration, and who are otherwise students, retired or unemployed.

A dwelling is a unit of residential accommodation :

• Separate, i.e. enclosed by walls , with no communication with any other unit except with the common parts of the building (corridor, staircase, etc.);

• Independent, i.e. having an entrance with direct access to the outside or to the common parts of the building.

Dwellings are divided into four categories: main residence, secondary residence, occasional residence, vacant dwelling.

Mobile homes and premises used for habitation within communities (retirement homes, hostels, religious communities, etc.) are not considered as dwellings. Dwellings located within a community (known as "staff dwelling") are considered as dwellings.

A household, as defined by the population census, refers to all people who share the same main residence, without these people necessarily being related to each other. A household may consist of a single person.

A family is the part of a household comprising at least two persons and consisting of:

• Either a couple living in the household with, if applicable, their child(ren) belonging to the same household;

• Or an adult with his/her child(ren) belonging to the same household (single-parent family).

For a person to be a child of a family, he or she must be single and have no spouse or children in the same household.

A household may consist of no families, one or more families.

Dwelling, the household, the family, the individual.

People residing in metropolitan France, in the overseas departments except Mayotte, and in the overseas collectivities of Saint-Barthélemy, Saint-Martin and Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon.

The other overseas territories carry out full enumeration every five years by way of derogation (Article 157).

The last full enumeration in Mayotte took place in 2017. Mayotte integrated the annual census surveys in 2021 and will be subject to a joint dissemination to the metropolitan territories and other DOMs from the 2023 census.

not applicable

Year 2021

Not applicable

Due to the health situation, the collection of the 2021 was not collected, with the exception of the territory of Mayotte and the census of boatmen. This postponement is recorded in article 17 of the law No. 2021-689 on the management of the exit of the health crisis. Despite this postponement, INSEE produced the legal populations and the statistical results of the 2021 population census according to the usual schedule by adapting its calculation methods.

The results of the household-family analysis resulting from the new housing sheet implemented in 2018 are disseminated for the first time in the 2021 population census,at the complementary exploitation.

The results will be available in the main survey from the 2024 census (when the postponement of the 2021 EAR no longer affects the calculation cycle).

Insee has delivered population data to Eurostat for the first time on a few variables in the RP 2021, for metropolitan France, for squares with sides of 1 km (Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2018/1799 of November 21, 2018).

At national level, INSEE has been producing gridded population data based on the population census since RP 2021. For this first year of gridding, some population variables are available on 1 km squares, for metropolitan France.

The population is the municipal population, with the exception of people habitually resident in mobile homes and homeless people, (since they have no fixed location). We therefore include people whose usual place of residence is within the municipality, in an ordinary dwelling or a community.

Insee has identified a number of methodological challenges to the production of this crude data:

• knowledge of the geographical coordinates of each address;

• estimation of census results by tile;

• dealing with the confidentiality of census tile data.

From autumn 2024, the files will be available in several formats: hapefile (shp) and geopackage (gpkg) for geographic information systems, and csv for database processing.

Data from the population census can be consulted in the form of interactive maps on the Insee "sub-municipal cartography" site.